Becoming Materialism In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

(AGG) Many people believe that money will buy you happiness, but no matter how much money you spend, you will never get the true happiness you receive from people. (BS-1) The characters in the novel Fahrenheit 451 focus on looks and value their possessions. (BS-2) Becoming materialistic has many effects towards people. (BS-3) There are some people in the society who reject the idea of materialism. (TS) Ray Bradbury created a society full of materialistic people to warn the readers about the dangers of being overly focused on materials. (MIP-1) The characters in this novel value their objects and focus on the superficial. (SIP-A) Everyone highly values all of their possessions. (STEWE-1) Mildred like everyone else, loves to use her

(STEWE-1) Montag becomes friends with a young girl named Clarisse. She teaches him about reality and how people treat each other “No one has time anymore for anyone else”(21). Clarisse tells Montag that whenever she talks to someone, they usually end up leaving or threatening her. This shows that people are too busy to listen to what others have to tell them. They don’t realize that there is a life outside of materials, and that there is a person trying to help them understand. (STEWE-2) Clarisse tries to explain to Montag that people barely talk to each other. But when they do, “‘They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools and say how swell” (28). The society is so addicted to their material objects that they only talk about them and nothing else. Even when they do talk about their objects, they don’t have an actual conversation because everyone says the same exact thing. (SIP-B) The characters also start to lose their emotions towards others. (STEWE-1) When Mildred puts in the alarm to turn in Montag for stealing books, she says “‘Poor family, poor family oh everything gone, everything, everything gone now…”(108). She is not upset that her husband will go to jail or be punished. All she cares about are her parlor walls, seashells, and every little object that makes her happy. Her family is just a bunch of

(BS-3) There were multiple contrasting characters that did not follow the same path as the others. (BS-2) Losing emotions and priorities are the two main effects of materialism. (BS-1) The characters described by the author are shown to be full of materialistic personalities. (R) A message from this book is that people should stop focusing on looks and objects and start interacting with people to receive true